Sometimes you get a review through and just want to give it that little extra push. Welcome Banshee, who have their new EP Say My Name out in the next few days. Now they’re not a new band. They got a push through the Red Bull campaign in 2014 including playing at Download which was all very cool, but the band overall felt they’d hit a bit of a brick wall and decided to reinvent themselves, including a name change.
Full details are in this interview over on Contact Music and it’s worth a read for anyone in a band who’d really interested in embarking on a music career.
I actually caught the band in their previous incarnation at Broadcast last summer opening for the sultry Tiggy and her bandmates of Eva Plays Dead. At the time I said they were “(not) bad at all, if a little angsty”, but this doesn’t carry through in the new material. Whether it’s that change in direction or the fact that I’m hearing them recorded rather than live I don’t know, but Say My Name is streets ahead of the couple of songs I heard in July.
Formed in Greenock in 2011, they’ve continued to push themselves in terms of live shows and effort. The Red Bull recording and Download show were the result of their hard work and now we have a new beginning for them in 2016. There’s a video coming soon for the title track of the EP which unfortunately I can’t share with you yet (trust me, it’ll be on the site as soon as I’m allowed). It’s a belter of a pop/alt-rock track with a superb shouty chorus and more bounce than a 1000-acre spring factory.
In addition to a brief intro track, there are three other songs on the EP. None of them quite hit the “boing” factor of “Say My Name” but when you’re presenting a small number of songs, you want to be showing variety. “Secret” comes close in parts, though, but emphasises the mild electronic overtones in the band’s sound a little more. I’d not call them electronica by a long shot, but this is the “synth” song.
“One Step Behind” is more poppy with a slow, vocal-driven beginning which gradually builds into something close to the “angsty” tone I remember from their gig. It’s followed by closer “Eagles” which is, for want of a better term, the heaviest track on here. The tone’s dropped a bit and wraps around Erin’s vocals while the beat verges more into “headbang” than “fist in the air”.
Say My Name is out on March 25th with pre-orders available now. The first 100 will be signed by the band and you can get them from their Big Cartel page (or digital on iTunes, though they may struggle to sign those ones!).
You can catch them live around EP release time and later in the year:
- Bannermans, Edinburgh (24March)
- Hootananny, Inverness (25 March)
- Downstairs, Aberdeen (26 March)
- Brew at the Bog Festival Inverness (Main Stage, 3 & 4 June)
- Wildfire Festival 2016 (24 June)
Banshee: facebook | twitter | instagram | youtube | bigcartel
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